


Sun's Heart

by StudioRat



Series: Winds of Twilight [1]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Betrayal, Canon Related, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Intrigue, Negotiations, Political Expediency, Scenery Porn, Secrets, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-05-05 05:56:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5363957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What If... there were a Nabszel story set in the post OoT timeline that establishes TP…?</p><p>And What If... Nabs is the new diplomat…?</p><p>(Unfinished, draft still evolving…)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never expect to drink tea without interruption when you're on a mission.

Nabooru sprawled on the ridiculous lion-headed divan, cursing the day and the ride and unfathomable protocol and every circumstance that forced her to be here. She couldn't remember having so much as an hour completely alone since the day the Hylian Royal Herald crossed the canyon.

The silence and solitude was so precious that she didn't even care that the cushions reeked of brambleflower perfume.

The last delegation - or most of it - had used these rooms also, though no sign of that occupation remained now. Nabs was impatient to gain access to the other suite, the state rooms in the central keep which last saw her King alive. The tight-lipped sheikah royal guard had sealed them with strong magic after that tragic night - but this **was** only her second full day in the capital.

Privately, she’d sworn to make her own door into that suite if they didn't open it again before the funeral.

Until then, she was determined to gather every scrap of information she could. Except for Avish and Caifei, the rest of her division were scouting castle and town doing exactly that. The other two she’d banished to the inner rooms to unpack and try to make the sleeping quarters more tolerable.

 

Nabs wallowed in blessed idleness until the clever whistling kettle announced its readiness for tea. Fortified with the scent of home and blessed warmth, she settled in to review the changes made to the treaty since the last draft.

Gods and ancestors, but the Hylians turned contract-weaving into a form of torture second only to the sheer agony of their law codes and investigation proceedings.

 

Nabooru managed two pages before someone rapped a short tattoo on the door. She ignored it.

Again the knocking, louder. She ignored this as well.

The intruder hammered a three-beat pattern loud enough to make the threshold charms ring.

 

Nabooru stormed to answer, shouting, “By the love of Din, if this isn't important I'll box your ears and drag you before…”

“Oh, do continue. We are rather curious where this is headed.” Zelda smiled, everything serene and orderly. How she’d made such a racket while weighted down with her elaborate, layered court dress was a mystery.

“I -Your majesty!” Nabooru stammered, desperately trying not to curse in front of the Princess. Yet another thing that Just Wasn't Done at court. “I'm sorry, I only meant -”

“Prevarication will not deter us from this story. Your placation is accepted.”

Was that a joke? From the sober, religious heir to the Red Lion throne? “Ah, yes, your majesty. I was going to drag them in front of you for the insult on our time.”

“As we are already here, I think we can keep this little secret from the courts, mm?”

Nabs winced at the barb, stepping back with a hurried bow. She regretted many things, but just now her unwisely public tirade about Hylian legal records was prime among them. She gestured to the garish salon in wordless invitation, mumbling assent.

 

The room was not large, but the  long and narrow box with private quarters at either end had a high ceiling throughout. The only doors to the enclosed inner balcony were in this room, an arrangement echoed in every suite of this part of the castle. 

Once part of the original curtain wall, subsequent architects had opened old windows and added a frothy colonnade around the interior, fitting new doors where narrow ogive windows once were. Somewhat more recently the royal family had commissioned elaborately carved and painted wood screens, fitted with thousands of bubbly green glass panes to enclose the colonnade balconies completely against wind and weather.

The guest quarters given to the Gerudo delegation were decorated in even worse taste, gaudy with saffron and cochineal and gilded wood. The stone walls had been sheathed in lime-whitened plaster and extravagant polychrome frescoes in imitation of Gerudo weaving. 

Fragrant herbs hung from the huge, age-black timbers supporting the floor above, but they were the wrong herbs. Storage, and servant’s quarters were all that lay above, they’d been told, but the stairs to access it did not connect to the guest quarters in any visible fashion.

 

As Zelda swept past with scroup of heavy silks, Nabs glanced out into the empty colonnade.

“Princess - your attendant-?”

"Sent for a proper tea for this meeting. It might take some time, as I was informed it has been missing a week now. We wonder how that might have happen." She wore a smirk and an arched eyebrow of mischief.

“You have my condolences, provided this is not a reprise of-”

“I assure you we hold the Gerudo in highest respect.”

-

It hadn't been hard to arrange for some tea to go missing. It hadn't even been hard to dismiss the servant without saying it as such. If the castle attendants hadn't quite figured out that their monarchs did not always wish a set of eyes on them, then Zelda would be quite surprised.

Truth be told, the Gerudo delegations were always a bit of amusement compared to the Hylian nobility. Not that she could or would say as much, but she was glad for the diversion.

As she reviewed little lists to herself and chose her ground inside the suite, she turned to examine Nabooru. Her heavy silks came to rest with her, perfectly arrayed like an unfolding lily, rose-gray against the deep coffee colored plank floors.

“I apologize for the interruption.”

“You wouldn't come if you didn't have something important, yeah?” Nabs returned with a smirk, shutting the carved walnut door. “Must be _something_ if you've shaken your shadow too.”

She moved with the same easy gait as her late King - neither delicate nor traditionally graceful, but fluid and striking. She stood amazingly tall by Hylian standards, and more imposing for the deep Sun’s-heart purple of her mourning garments. Where Ganondorf had his clothing tailored closely and he wore his armor like a second skin, Nabooru’s layers made her lower half like a cloud of ink in water when she moved.

The other half was likewise arresting, but for opposite reasons. The high embroidered collar and long sleeves of tight split-skirted tunic could not begin to make the tight wool modest. Zelda avoided lingering on her ample endowments only with great effort.

 

The trouble was, Nabooru wore a topaz spirit gem on her brow, with an uncomfortably familiar gold setting. It was not the same. It could not be - the war crown of the Gerudo had no copy. Yet no one who had seen it could mistake that Nabooru wore its plainer sister.

What, exactly, was her status now, in Hylian terms? Regent? Queen? Had it changed not at all and she remained merely a general? The Gerudo system of rank remained murky as ever - and they all seemed to enjoy disrupting convention whenever the opportunity arose.

Nabooru wore her glorious red hair in a radically different manner than she'd ever seen on a Gerudo before: a high horsetail that fell to her knees, even though the whole of it was restrained in a six-strand fishbone plait. Impa said it was an aspect of mourning for them - another mirror of Hyrule, where grief called for unbound hair under a lace veil. Zelda made a mental note to investigate whether and how much the Gerudo augmented their natural beauties for political or ceremonial purpose. Just in case.

"I wanted to assure you we are doing everything in our power to resolve matters - which I am sure has been expounded upon until everyone grows weary of the words." Zelda drew a measured breath, clasping her hands before her, fingertips meeting.

Nabooru planted one fist on her ample hips, choosing ground a good twenty paces distant, with a low divan between. She lifted her chin in silence, expression closed. 

"As our society is structured," Zelda continued at last, twining her fingers together. "We must consider the concerns of our titled stewards. There are shades of this unfortunate matter on which we disagree, and so I override their fears to speak with you now. There is a chance this could happen again, and I want you to know everything we know, to prevent any recurrence of this tragedy and bring justice to our peoples."  
  


"In plainer language, you put his entire guard to the sword and only now you think to ask if the coup didn't start among them?" Nabs crossed her arms over her chest, glaring down her long nose. "I confess myself amazed how swiftly and succinctly you Hylians handled the executions, given the ponderous weight of your beloved protocols."

  
Zelda clenched her hands, heavy silk gloves drawing taut over the thin bandages they hid. She was going to have to scale back her training so long as she had to fence with this woman. She would need a fresh outlet for her frustrations - something safe. Something that wouldn't endanger the flawless mask her rank demanded.

"This is part of why I wish your aid. Too many of his - and my own - loyal guard died in that encounter. It was well planned, staged for a moment when we would least be able to recognize and respond to the threat until the crucial moments were well past." She extended her hands, palm up. "We lay no guilt with the Gerudo nation for the transgressions of a few wayward souls among them - but every traitor must be eliminated the moment they are uncovered, for the good of all."

Nabooru's lips twisted in a too-familiar smirk. Her silence conveyed her contempt perfectly.

"Your king thought much the same, as he hesitated not at all. Tragic as the circumstance may be, our duty to our people remains sacred. The chance of peace for all our lands is greater than the value of any individual life, however bright."  Zelda dropped her hands to smooth her embroidered tabard, ruthlessly strangling the hint of doubt nagging at the back of her mind. "Decide nothing now - let your own people confirm the truth."


	2. Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When one receives an unexpected guest, it is polite to discuss trifles and allow them to reveal the business which brought them in their own time.

“Yeah,” said Nabs, her eyes bright and dangerous. “You can start by opening the state rooms in the name of that truth, and giving us access to the body to perform final rites.”

Zelda turned an interesting shade of red.

“You have had such a long journey. There is much to see - and there are some delicate matters that would best be left private for the crown. A little time, and I assure you I will get you into his rooms.” She smoothed a non-extant wrinkle from her gloves. “There are some complications with the body, unfortunately. The assailants poisoned their blades. Our best physickers have yet to determine with what. Anyone who has gotten near gets ill as well. It would take some convincing of my council to let you near before the pyre as half of them believe you can raise the dead or some other dark magic.”

Nabs raised a brow. “Has the seal on the state rooms been lifted or broken since it was set?”

“No-”

“Then to what end more time, Princess? You cannot tamper with evidence without leaving traces. You do understand your chances of retaining our goodwill and therefore our alliance dwindle with every sunset you keep me out of those rooms, yeah?”

“As I am sure you understand giving you public access will incite the Lords towards some… difficulties. I will not let my people believe they have reason to continue the wars of our pasts.”

Nabooru stared. Zelda couldn't possibly be implying - no, she was young, sheltered. _**Religious.**_ “There will have to be a public opening or you’ll seed discontent on every side of the border. I can't promise anything or sign any treaty until I know what he left behind those doors. Especially now. I'm no sage to read his bones, but an orange rupee says he left a message behind that will tell me the truth of this foul plot. I know what I should find - and what I shouldn’t. I’ve served at his side since we were both kids. Did serve. Whatever.”

 

Distracted by the sudden and wrenching reminder that the impossible had come to pass, Nabooru began to pace. He’d been like a force of nature, impossibly huge in ways that went beyond his frame. The spirits and magic of the ancestors hung thick around him always - that he was gone remained unfathomable.

She'd brushed off his silence the last season as the demands of his rank. He trusted her with the armies of the People, he would have sent word if he needed them to do anything they weren't already. He’d been only ever busier over the years as the alliance they often spoke of started to take shape, more distant. But Kings were not supposed to be like lesser mortals.

She couldn't quite shake the itchy feeling that he would thunder into the room at any moment. He couldn't be dead. Not Gan-the-mountain, Gan-the-King, Gan-who-still-owes-me-fifty-rupees-for-the-thing-with-the-pumpkins.

 

Nabooru forgot everything the elder sisters drilled into her about protocol, and dropped gracelessly onto a divan next to her abandoned tea.

“He’d been at court for so long - I know how you must feel. Like every time I turn a corner, he must be there.” Zelda sighed heavily, and lowered herself to a seat as well. Apparently she wasn't _**all**_ ice and propriety.

“Things changed after his coronation, yeah, but he was always there. Even when he wasn't, there was something he’d conjured, or some scheme in motion, messengers, letters, new books or weapons.” Nabs sighed, meeting the unreadable, cold eyes of the Crown Princess, heir to the Red Lion throne.

“I can only imagine what he might tell us, if he were here. To have a stiff drink and be over it already,” she said, idly rearranging the layers of her silk skirts. “Or something.”

“Goddesses know I’d have words for _**him**_ ,” Nabs said, clenching her fists. Unwise to say, and her sisters would despair of her ever learning word weaving, but true. Three-fourths were vulgar, and all of them angry.

Silence filled the space between them, the sobriety of it absurd in the middle of the riotous salon. Avesh and Cafei had probably left off the unpacking to listen at the inner door an hour ago. She certainly would have.

“Have some tea,” Nabooru said, sliding the cup across the low table. At least the top wasn't gilded, but it was a hideous red-black marble, polished to mirror finish.. “I didn't think to bring chiba, but it's something, yeah?”

Zelda looked at the paper-thin porcelain for a moment, hands clenched. “It would be quite rude to take the only cup - and, I can imagine my servant Kella now chiding me about drinking anything before it is tested. A silly thing, really.”

Nabooru snorted in disgust, going to the sideboard for a fresh cup. She wasn't trained for diplomacy with degenerate, dishonest Hylians. She never should have been here. Her place was the sands, the battlefield, the glittering caverns of the high desert.

 

How could he have allowed himself to be ambushed? She couldn't understand it. Such a lapse in his guard - something had gone horribly wrong, and she couldn't untangle what it was. He was supposed to be their hope and protection, the strength of the people.

He hadn't even sired many children - he’d stayed too busy with magic and the business of war to embrace any regular lovers. Now he was dead, and all they had were the festival children and the petition-born. None grown, and none at all in the last five years, as he spent more and more of his time in Hyrule than anywhere else.

And none for her.

She wasn't sure she even wanted to go through the mess of bearing, and certainly not of raising children - but there were plenty of sisters who would happy to take her babies among their own. She’d considered seeking a boon-child from him a few winters ago, during another brief peace. He’d outgrown a little of the swagger at last - or maybe he was tired - but she’d decided she didn't want to know yet if he performed all his kingly duties with the same perfunctory excellence. Especially if anything changed on the field afterwards.

Anyways, there was always later.

After the war.

Year after year she avoided the fortress during every festival and petition night. She would not live long enough to see another, now.

 

“Before moon rises, we will enter the state rooms,” said Zelda at last, her voice as smooth as glass, and as brittle. “No lords, no attendants. For either of us, save to wait at the door, as you see fit. After, they will again be sealed until we are all prepared for a more public event.”

Nabooru drank her tea without tasting it, studying the princess in return. This was a major concession for her, though it shouldn't have been. The serene reserve was frayed at the edges - her hands moved incessantly in subtle adjustments of nonexistent imperfections in her dress. Gan would have known how to use this at once. He’d been bookish even as a child, and later as their prince and then King, as ready to leverage words as war parties.

“At first light,” Zelda continued, her wide blue-violet eyes betraying no hint of what disturbed her thoughts. Other than the ignominy of any concession at all, even before so private an audience. The House of Red Lions did not relinquish its conquests gracefully.“We can make the journey to the pyre ahead of the formal procession at week’s end - however, the seal on it cannot be removed. The contagion is strong, and I cannot risk plague.”

Nabs refreshed her own cup, buying more time to think. She'd probably just broken six different rules of protocol in doing it, but she'd already fouled twenty others. What would Gan say, if their places were changed?

 

 _ **Don't get yourself killed**_ , is what he’d have said.

 _ **Pots and kettles**_ , she shot back at his ghost in her head.

She could imagine his sardonic look in reply, how he’d say with his silence that once again, he knew some deep secret she didn't.

“Since you left your shadow out of it, I’ll do the same,” Nabooru said. She might not be able to leverage this to greater advantage yet, but they had some hours to moonrise still. “It’ll be easier than explaining to the girls why his messy habits can't be tomorrow's gossip anyway. Beyond that? You've only got my discretion to the extent that the security of my people isn't wrecked by what I find.”

“Of course,” the princess replied at once. Too quickly? Or merely an automatic, empty civility? Either way, she tasted the tea with delicate grace, and changed the subject. “You may be interested to hear Ganondorf once - ah - definitively corrected a courtier who decided to remind everyone that all Gerudo poison their food for flavor and spite.”

“Which we do,” Nabooru shot back. “It’s about the only way to keep you people from taking it.”

 

-

 

Zelda winced inwardly, biting her tongue to hold back her anger. What was it with these desert thieves that they could rattle her so thoroughly? Better not to acknowledge the hit - Nabooru had no reason at all to spare her feelings, and every cause to lay the blame for the tragedy on their longstanding enemies.

So.

She smiled instead.

“I let him plan the next meal so he might correct our perception and rebuke our own habit of preparing bland food. But I digress. I am sure we should find nothing condemning about Hyrule, just as I suspect we will find nothing condemning about the Gerudo.”

“You made our King cook for your court? I’d never credit such a tale from anyone else,” Nabooru returned. “Then again, I’m just as impressed you’re casting threats into the ring. Murder and assassination unfolding in your own house, under the questionable protection of your incompetent guard - and still you dare to demand of your neighbors.”

“Not made. He insisted,” she said, allowing the barb to slide past, and a wistful note to shade her voice. Despite the years, it remained a glittering memory. The first of many entertainments the dark, barbaric foreigner had devised to impress the quiet, bookish daughter of his rival monarch without ever seeming to address her at all. “It was quite an event, as no one could say no to a king’s feast - just to set that record straight.”

Nabooru laughed, short and sharp, her heavy braid swinging as she shook her head. “When I have less to mourn, I will regret having missed such a rare treat.”

Zelda bit back a barb about losing many of her best in so many recent conflicts. Gan had been much the same in his manner as this new Queen - if she was a Queen - sharp of wit and tongue, short of patience, and cutting about protocol. She would not be easily distracted from the circumstance that brought them together, even for a moment. Which would make purest hell of further negotiations.

She tried to let the frustration slide from her, concentrating on the tea. Strong, roasted stuff, laced with something warm and almost bitter at the back of the flavor. Why people from a province that already burned harbored a love for food that kindled the same fire inside them, she would never understand.

“I can understand your position well enough. This is a tense situation. We don't know who to trust any more than you. I need an ally in these dark days - and I cannot believe you wish the war to reignite any more than I,” she said, draining the bitter tea. She held Nabooru’s unflinching, opaque gaze, sifting through her private lists for the right phrase to move her opponent.

Nabooru worked her jaw, a subtle shift of weight setting her dress in motion again. A hardened warrior, perhaps, but still green in the equally deadly dance of politics. She wanted a scapegoat and bloodshed as much as any other faction leader.

“He spoke highly of you, and we are well aware of the mixed compliment and rebuke you issue to us, journeying so far and at such a time with only a fraction of your army. Just as I have not gathered all of mine.”

 

-

 

Nabooru refreshed both their cups in silence. Better not to open her mouth and risk crowing about her hidden armies. Hylians may have sharp ears and sharper tongues, but they were blind and soft, especially here in the capital.

Fifteen years working to convince the Hylians to give them access to the river, to lower the tariffs on food, to revise their endless binding laws, and now - now! - the crown Princess of Hyrule sat before her in mourning dove gray and purple silks, humbly begging alliance.

Nabooru drank her tea, savoring the victory her beloved King had worked for to the end, if she could believe the Hylian accounts. He would never waste an advantage - and neither would she.

 

-

 

“Time comes for you soon enough, Princess. If you don't want your lords knowing you’re distributing favors, best we go by separate paths. Better still if yours includes the wine cellars, yeah?”

A modicum of trust. Fueled by a feeling of victory, perhaps, but a beginning. Zelda lifted her cup in acknowledgement to Nabooru. A knock came at the door, drawing Zelda’s eye to it.

“We are certain something fitting will be found. We will take our leave. We appreciate the tea you have shared.” She set the cup down and rose, reclaiming the distance and formality proper for the Crown Princess of all Hyrule before a provincial regent. More quietly, she added, “Until later. You have my thanks.”


	3. Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be certain of your ground, your resources, and your purpose before ever you engage your opponent. If you may be certain of your opponent as well, nothing short of the gods can stop you.

Nabooru waited for the last guard to pass under her chosen window, slightly dizzy with the effort of hanging upside down so long. But what else could be done, in a country that didn't have the decency to hang draperies that reached the floor?

This one she ensnared easily, barely even reacting as she hooked an arm around his neck and drew him close. Less than twenty heartbeats and he fainted, dead weight in her arms like all the rest. As he was the last, she let him simply fall, dropping lightly to the floor beside him. He groaned in muffled agony - but rousing quickly availed him nothing. She pressed the poisoned cloth over his mouth, counting ten as she poured another measure of rotgut from her flask.

They would all wake in a few candlemarks with splitting headaches, ripe with cheap liquor.

That none would remember drinking any mattered not at all - they would all accuse each other of vice anyway.

Zelda announced her approach with deliberate clicking steps, meandering and idle, quite as if she had no other purpose in these halls than refreshing her memory of its paintings. Nabooru remained in the shadows near the sealed door, but again, Zelda walked alone.

Where was Impa, the tight-lipped Sheikah? Not inside the state rooms, surely, but leaving her charge twice in the cycle of a single day?

Unless she _**was** _ there, hidden.

Nabooru pulled the shadows around her, slipping her moon-knife free of its sheath in perfect silence. Zelda meandered closer, oblivious to her danger.

If Impa watched from another shadow, she could not fail to respond to a threat against her charge.

Nabooru sprang, tucking the wicked blade under that proud lily-white chin and pulling the Princess into a rigid embrace.

 

Silence.

 

She hissed under her breath, drawing a few careful drops of royal blood. Zelda held her breath. Nabooru scoured the shadows for a guardian who clearly wasn't there.

“Hn,” she said, releasing her victim. “So you _**are**_ alone. How dreadful your sins must be, with such desperate subterfuge.”

Zelda turned a fascinating shade of red.

Her fair complexion seemed especially vulnerable to displays of emotion. A good reason for rigid discipline, but Nabs had already broken through it twice today alone.

 

Gan must have unsettled her terribly.

 

Zelda did something with a slender artifact heretofore concealed by the long sleeves of her mantle, and the low whom-whom of the locked door subsided.

Nabooru abandoned teasing the Princess any further in favor of her real object - knowing everything it was possible to know about her king in his final days. She had to know, so she could decide what to do about the treaty.

And everything else.

 

-

 

These state rooms lay in the northwest wing of the central keep, a grander version of the enfilade suites of the old curtain wall. Nabooru breathed a small prayer of thanks that these were done in better taste. The furnishings were all heavy walnut and cherry antiquities, grand in scale and richly carved. The light was surprisingly good - candle lanterns hung everywhere, woken by another wave of Zelda’s magic device.

The shallow receiving room held little evidence of use - a broad copper dish on the central table still held a skim of stagnant water and rings of corrosion from its evaporation. Beside it, some blackened and desiccated flower, unknown to her. Caifei might be able to identify it.

To the left, whatever painting should have hung there had been replaced with a map of the world, pinned to the wood paneling with a set of plain throwing knives. Several jars stood below, all with bouquets of rolled paper. A cursory look confirmed her suspicion - more maps, and charts relating to the same.

To the right, a wide padded bench under a set of ancient Gerudo war banners. The dust and the refinement of the hangings suggested they might be original to the place.

Or at least, brought long enough ago to have their mounting improved on by their hosts.

Nabooru glanced back at Zelda as she finished her inspection of this room. She’d pulled the doors closed behind them, and replaced the seal. The princess swept a speaking glance around the room, sighing as she completed her circuit. Her gaze lingered on the map.

“I once worried why he found the paintings distasteful, years ago, when we first found them exiled to the hallway. Every time I have been here, he had a different map up.”

Nabooru snorted, narrowing her eyes at this last, artful rendition of the world. Washes of sepia and precious, pale copper blue defined land and water. Graceful umber script and gold ornamentation picked out every important detail across the whole. The most care, of course, had been lavished on the omphalos, centered not on the Hylian temple of Light, but their own shrine to the Lady of Sands in the heart of the sprawling Temple of Spirit.

“Without knowing what was on them, I couldn't say. Can't be too surprised he would advance his own people though, yeah?”

Zelda nodded. “Of course he would. Part of persuading my father to let him prepare a meal - not merely the once, but every time we were at peace - was to ensure the nobility would become a little more welcoming to all Gerudo. One cannot graciously speak hate when one’s food is prepared by the mistrusted. Hospitality is key to breaking down some barriers.”

“Some,” said Nabooru, with an arch look.

The princess was all serenity again, cold and formal. She might as well have been reciting from a dry tome on statecraft or philosophy. The kind of thing Gan had enjoyed defacing with his argumentative marginalia of an idle evening.

”I have to admit, I was not prepared for the particular spices your meals employ. I thought at first I might have eaten of a bomb flower. It was with some amusement to Ganondorf that many younger nobles attempted to turn his feasts into a competition to see who could bear more pain.”

Nabooru laughed, short and sharp. “Of course they did. He made viper’s blood for each didn't he? A small dish, a heavy, dark red paste invariably crowned with saffron and starflower?”

“Yes - brought with the main course in hundreds of tiny bowls, like salt.”

“Maybe it all tastes like the same fire to you, but there's no flavor to the Erisfruit we make that from. It's only fire. We use it in spirit trials, and as a medicine.”

Zelda frowned. “Then perhaps I am mistaken about the name, as I was quite fond of that sauce. It seemed very like a heavier and slightly sweeter version of a sharp hot relish we use with dark meats. One of the few foods he introduced that I could enjoy without reserve, though no one else shared my opinion.”

“Hn,” Nabooru paced around the small room, but there was nothing else to find. No cabinets, no storage of any kind beyond those pots of maps. “Anything strike you as different about your dish?”

Silence.

Nabooru turned, to find Zelda blushing again, her hands wrapped tightly around the fluted gold shaft of her magic device.

“Trillium,” she said, with the faintest hint of resentment. For the question, or the answer? “Every dish sent to the royal table would bear trillium blooms as well. Purple for my father, and white for me.”

“Your father sweat much when he tried the viper’s blood?”

“He never touched it. His taster swore it was poison, even after Impa called him a fool in front of everyone. Ganondorf ate my lord father's dish and his own, grinning like a wolf the whole time.”

“Yeah, he would,” said Nabooru, shoving through the double doors to the next room. “A gold rupee says _**your**_ bowls of viper’s blood never held even one Erisfruit seed.”


	4. The Drawing Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where your position imports great advantage, mounting an attack is foolish, for you lose the advantage of both the material and moral high ground. 
> 
> When you hold a position at intersections of roads and rivers and relations between your neighbors, the way to preserve your advantage is to join hands with your allies, for you hold the key to empire.

Through the double doors, the second room opened to roughly three times the depth of the first. The columns and pilasters were sculpted to imitate gathered, draped cloth, all in the same blinding lime white as the walls and heavy curtains. A fantasy of a pavilion - meant to mock, or worse, ‘improve’ upon the Gerudo tents?

Or.

A clumsy attempt to offer visiting dignitaries the comforts of home in a cold foreign land? The dark furnishings loomed in clusters at each corner, every bench and settle piled with cushions.

The central axis of the room remained clear, and someone had marked a massive sword flower in the center of the floor. Nabooru knelt to examine the seamless alabaster inlay - no doubt whatsoever it was made with magic. But it was not new - scuffs carried cleanly from one side of a petal to the other. Under each of the windows stood a brightwork chest - all holding blankets and winter cloaks. The only interesting thing about them was every single piece was Gerudo made, and protected from damage by bundles of their own native sage.

“Impressive hospitality,” she conceded, shutting the third chest. So far, nothing - but there should be four rooms left still to examine.

 

-

 

”It would be dangerous to slight any dignitary,” Zelda began, measuring her steps to the edge of the sword flower.

The staff had nearly rioted when he cut the thing into the floor, so many years ago. Yet, as in so many other things, the non-apology he offered in explanation at the next day’s court carried an obviousness and inevitable weight behind it. It was as useful to argue an announcement that it rained, as to say he should be suffered to use practice courts outdoors, in winter, designed for swordsmen two thirds his size at best.

“To neglect one who helped broker peace, it would be unthinkable. He was very important to us all, being able to get the Goron and Zora to speak.”

“Yeah, mostly to agree about the perfidy of Gerudo thieves. We’ve argued the expense of the tactic for years. Especially as it's gained us nothing.”

“We all struggled to gain things we needed. I can't help but believe we would all have more were we to share more freely. How much less we might all suffer, if the dreadful necessity of tariffs and border guards and standing armies could be swept away. He, of course, played the contrary in every conversation, though in negotiations he pursued perfect advantage for your people with unswerving devotion. Especially when he could annoy Lord Elapidan.”

Zelda shook her head at the memory, stopping herself from the motion of smoothing her dress only once midway into the action.

“He also liked pointing out that one who could not think as their opponent would never know themselves either.”

Nabooru stalked to the opposite side of the sword flower, a vision of deadly efficiency and arresting sensuality. Her accented Hylian purred with threat.

“How well do you know yourself, Princess?”

“Very well,” she said, lifting her chin. “Yet never so well as I might like.”

“And you want me to believe you had no warning at all of treachery brewing. No word of filthy desert jackals among my sisters, bribing your castle guard, laying down with enemies of the peace, acquiring Hylian costume for the masque.”

“How well do you know and trust the sisters you sent into town this morning?”

Nabooru shook her head in disgust and stalked away to complete her circuit of the room anyway, looking behind Gerudo tapestries to find mediocre Hylian paintings.

Landscapes, mostly, a few pastoral studies of anonymous peasants and artisans. The weavings didn't suit her taste either, but they did seem to keep the room warmer. Zelda made a mental note to look into commissioning tapestries more befitting a Hylian aesthetic for her own suite.

After the treaty was settled of course. Unless the commission could encourage the affirmation of favorable terms.

Zelda made another note, watching Nabooru scowl over every fruitless grouping of seats and surfaces, all in matching dark tones and rich crimson upholstery, adorned here and there with more examples of Gerudo textile artistry.

The tables held few ornaments - a glass bauble in the shape of a peahat, a brass bell, a few vases with rotting flowers in them and a carpet of dead leaves surrounding. At the very least, she must was concede that it was impossible any ~servant~ could have come in these rooms since they were sealed.

In the farthest corner, two benches and a settle stood around what was once meant to serve as a spare bed, shoved at an angle to span the corner. A support had been added sometime in the last decade - she couldn't quite remember when, but surely she had made a note of it in her journals.

Somewhere.

The artfully waxed, heavily carved planks spanned the long side, both pegged and lashed in place as though to announce the maker expected it to endure rough treatment. The arrangement and wear on the cushions certainly suggested it saw more use than all the rest of the furniture together.

Nabooru perched on the edge experimentally and at once her face announced her understanding. Zelda crossed the sword flower quietly, bracing herself for the inevitable.

 

-

 

Where the other pieces were large, this one was exactly suited to Ganondorf’s massive frame. Biting back a curse, Nabooru stood - and noticed something else.

The high-backed settle opposite the bed-couch had also been modified. A clever carpenter had at some point fashioned an extended skirt for the piece, bringing the seat to mid-thigh. Small wonder the tufted stool in front of it sat so close - it clearly served as a footrest for the occupant.

And under the corner cushions - red, every cloth that wasn't obviously an import in this room was costly cochineal red - she saw a hint of white knitted lace.

Nabooru looked at Zelda as she drew the cloud-soft woolen shawl out of its hiding place. She didn't really need to look at it to know who had mislaid it. The question now was - why.

If she visited often enough and long enough to need a seat that put her eyes level with Gan’s, why not have a new one made? Why modify a relic, and then try to hide that fact? And why the lapse in attention that lost the shawl in the piles of cushions?

“We had many discussions over time. My father insisted the halls were not the most convenient place for topics of war, trade, tactics, and a myriad of other fascinating things. He was far more well spoken than my tutors growing up, and certainly more intriguing. So, we retired here.”

Nabooru raised a brow. “I understand Hylian fathers generally have opinions about young women spending many hours in the company of a man.”

“Indeed. As you noticed, my servant is not often away from my side. Rank also affords certain freedoms - my namesake also being known to defy social expectations helps.”

Nabooru frowned, idly folding the shawl into a tidy square.“Do go on. I was under the impression your opinion of freedom and tradition had little to recommend it.”

Zelda blushed, putting effort into brushing her dress flat to no effect. “It is difficult at times to separate title from person. Gan was able to. And you have many things in common with him. Suffice to say, most of my life has been navigating the court. It is … unusual circumstances that bring us here.”

“My king died to save your lily white ass from a coup before the ink was even dry on the damn treaty,” Nabooru spat. “If your story is even to be believed. Unusual doesn't begin to cover it, Princess.”

 

-

 

“I'm not in need of lecture, I assure you.” Zelda felt the heat rise in her face as much from anger as embarrassment. More so, that this woman was getting under her skin so swiftly, without the advantage of prior acquaintance.

“And unless you have some means of information that sustains the belief Hylians have of the Gerudo, you do not know for certain the color of my ass.”

Nabooru leered. “If I had any interest in ogling a skinny, milk-faced statue of a woman, I wouldn't need to steal any keys or buy any magic to know.”

“That is quite presumptuous of you.” Zelda looked away, endeavoring to regain her serenity. “I am sure I must be immune to such charms as you might think to leverage.”

Zelda felt herself growing hot. Ganondorf had alluded to such liaisons when he was still new at court. It sounded thrilling when compared to Hylian customs. And to think that it was entirely common among them? Unremarkable, even?

During one of their more private conversations, Zelda had asked him about how children worked in such an arrangement. It had been an interesting education.

And now to haves woman her own rank show up? It was a challenge to keeps her hands from wandering about.

Ganondorf had been one sort of force of nature. Nabooru felt like another.

“Oh princess,” said Nabooru, pitching her voice lower, her intent unmistakeable. “You must be in desperate want of an education. If I wasn't so tempted to gut you for your failure to protct a sworn ally under your own roof, I might just amuse myself with introducing you to your ignorance.”

“Th-the kingdom does not need two major scandals inside of a season. And I am sure I do not know what you mean.” 

Zelda knew by now she must be bright red. She endeavored to look at anything, everything but Nabooru or her particular charms - save when her treacherous eyes found some interesting thing about the Gerudo. 

Which was all of her. 

“Two? Is there something scandalous about mortality in a monarch?” Nabooru murmured, gliding along the alabaster arc towards the center of the sword flower dividing them. 

“Or is that a motive I hear on your lips?” 

“I cannot imagine what you might mean. He was a king, and one of few prospects that Hyrule would not need to negotiate… difficult arrangements for when it is time for heirs. So. I speak of this affair - this murder - as a scandal greater than whatever lustful figment you might entertain.” 

“Oh?” She said, pacing down the arc of another petal. “Are we in a new golden age, that one less Gerudo thief is now cause for Hylian woe? I confess myself surprised to hear so strong a word as murder on your lips. ‘Tragic accident’, I believe the official announcement read. ‘Unfortunate incident’ before the court. Even your inquest records stop short of naming it treason.” 

“I know not what else to call it but that the evidence I know points at that exactly. What happened *at* the masque was mundane enough. Whatever the Magick feel is, it only occurred here in these rooms. Go. Look. And know that these rooms were guarded even when himself left them. What official reports might say need not be wholly accurate to protect the greater good, no?” 

Nabooru glared, golden eyes bright as she loomed uncomfortably close, using her height to great advantage. She smelled of cinnamon and coffee and clove, and something else she could not name, but knew too well. 

Everything that embodied heat and the power of the dark earth under the sun. 

The desert people were as much Din’s children as the Goron - another reason, perhaps, for the depth of their mutual hatred. Among many others. 

All this ran in circuit around her mind as she fought to hold that piercing golden gaze. To look away at all would not only concede the battle of wills, but tempt her the linger on the immediacy of who and what stood before her, in all her fleshly reality. 

“The prayerful princess has a spine after all,” Nabooru said, snorting in contempt. “Pity you didn't discover it in time to preserve us from this difficult moment, yeah?” 

Zelda held her tongue. Without another word, Nabooru turned smartly about and marched toward the inner rooms


	5. The Dining Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is true that in many situations you may prevail by stratagem and diplomacy. But when your fortune places you upon ground which can only be saved from destruction by swift and decisive violence, you must fight.
> 
> In the face of certain disaster, moral rightness be damned.

The third room hit her squarely in the gut. It was a wreck. Black bloodstains splattered the floor and walls, with grotesque trails showing where the victims had been dragged to the windows and presumably pitched out. The high, heavy table in the center lay splintered beyond repair, the benches shattered. The door to the servant’s hallway, like the main door, was sealed with strong magic, but these doors would never again close without such aid. The floor was covered in shards of broken pottery and rotting food.

No mice tracks. Zelda was telling the truth about the efficiency of the magic sealing these rooms.

Nabooru knelt to examine the traces more closely. The extent of the wreckage obscured the real tally - but the drinking glasses they favored here had heavy bases. There were only three of those - and the eating tools told the same story. 

Three loyal sisters, out of an entire division. 

“This wasn't part of your earlier story.”

Zelda nodded. “We are not sure what happened here, but I believe it occurred either during or after the masque. The room was looked over just after the incident, and after no one was confirmed alive, I sealed it. I am hoping you might know something - my nose itches of magic I cannot place while I'm in here.”

Nabooru snorted, rising slowly, scanning the dim room for other signs. The floor under the wreckage of the table caught her eye, and she picked her way toward it. “I'm no mage. Who did the looking, and when?”

“My servant, not long after the unfortunate events. The flowers had not yet begun to wilt. Given what I had learned from Ganondorf, it seemed the best course to try preventing a war, leaving things as they were as much as possible.”

Nabooru nodded, kneeling again amid the wrecked table, carefully brushing splinters away from the deep gouges underneath. Each one spanned at least an ell, and from the angle of the cuts in the upper layer of the table’s shattered surface, the same instrument did both. 

The same large, razor-sharp instrument. 

Wielded with enough force to cleave rock maple and still sink a thumbnail's depth into the floor below. 

“Yeah. I’d have thought this a hammer blow if not for these clean edges at the leading edge of the blow, and the floor. With all the blood, easy to miss. But the Goron don't use blades.” Nabooru chewed on her lower lip, leaning over the heart of the damage to examine it from a slightly different angle. “You're going to tell me what he said, yeah?”

“He was delirious, most of what he said didn't make much sense. But he was quite adamant that the only thing his people would see is war or unadulterated truth. I - could not hear it directly. The poison claimed his physicians only days afterwards. I committed what was understood to memory and recorded it as soon as I could. He also cursed a ‘Loba’ or something like that.”

Nabooru bit back a curse, tracing the pattern of the bloodstains splattered across the floor and walls. The splash patterns were consistent, and reminded her too well of another chamber with the same grisly adornments. A project of the exiled Rova no one but the two of them knew anything about. Gan himself put an end to it - with her help - but too late to offer their lost sisters anything but final rites. “And of course, they spoke only Hylian.”

-

“Not quite. Not Gerudo, but they did speak another language from where they studied. Not wholly useful, and not wholly useless either. Either way, I committed everything he said to ink. With all the secrets he knew, I cannot say what was delirium and what was not. We would of course urge you to review the transcript **_privately_** for the same reason.”

Nabooru stood. “So. He leaves for the masque from here, and goes directly to the great hall with neither detour nor delay?”

“So far as could be determined. The main body of guards had been positioned differently to keep guests in their proper areas. Many corridors only had occasional patrols, and nothing else outside the site of the main attack was found bloody or out of place. Yet. We have this.”

Zelda chewed her lower lip, wondering if Nabooru knew about his ability to teleport some distances. As a skilled warrior and leader, she must. She tried to ignore the image in her mind that suggested sweaty skin and an interesting swordwork routine.

And how it might be interesting to feel the heat coming from the Gerudo woman, and if she might burn to her touch as Ganondorf had.

“You had fought side by side with him. You know what he could be capable of, I am sure.”

Nabooru turned slowly, a dangerous stillness settling over her. “You **_dare_** to suggest this carnage - the vicious murder of his personal guard in such a **_specific_** fashion as to implicate the Goron - flowed from **_his_** hands?”

Zelda paled, and felt herself grow angry. “I suggest no such thing. I speak of his abilities with magic - that I can only guess his movements right now. You wish to find a monster under every word - and if you make them yourself then you shall always find a monster. Do you need time to comport yourself towards a just examination? Or do you have some other reason to speak baseless ill of the honored dead?”

She didn't try to keep the bitterness from her voice. Had there been anyone else present, she could not risk embarrassing a woman who may as well be the new monarch of the Gerudo. She still had not figured out what role Nabooru filled now. But if the Gerudo wanted a contest of wills, then she supposed they both might have had the same teacher to sharpen them.

“No,” she said at last, gold eyes flicking away to trace the grotesque blackened stains again. “Too much time has passed already. What I **_need_** is a complete picture of how and when every part of this travesty unfolded, and no more of vagueness and dissembling. Who has a reason to want us blaming the Goron? Was one of theirs injured in the melee at the masque? When did he pass into and out of your surveillance that night, and who was seen in the public hall and servants halls before, during, after?”

“Who _wouldn't_ want us blaming the Goron? The Zora are an obvious choice. So is a third of Hylian land owners. And who knows amongst your people. As to the details, I have that on paper. Interviews of credible sources; Goron, Zora, guards, a few servants and courtiers. We did not bother asking every person at the masque. Why, when everything was normal as they saw it? The list is small, and we can look over the details after this. The simple part is, all seemed normal and he remained in the public eye until things went awry.”

“Except,” she said, gesturing to the wreckage at her feet. “None of **_this_** was in the inquest records. What else have you excised, that you only offer now?”

“My apologies for not saying anything on it. You must understand, if you are so ready to see monsters and plots, how this would affect the court - the treaty! - if this were common knowledge. I did not wish to turn your thoughts one way or another until you could see for yourself, without meddling inbred hens under our feet.” Zelda crossed the room carefully, avoiding the stains, skirts lifted nearly to her knees to keep them from dragging over the floor. She paused next to a set of clear boot prints crossing the threshold into the next room. “I know your people have a magic somewhat different than ours. We have no reliable writings on it, and Ganondorf refused to elaborate. However. I have reasonable cause to believe that when he vanished in the aftermath of the attack at the grand masque, he came here directly. Why **_this_** room, I cannot guess.”

Nabooru followed her gaze, picking her own meandering path around the room to trace the faint trail backwards from the clear marks at the inner threshold at Zelda’s feet all the way back to the muddled splotch between the table and wrecked door. She stared at that place for a long moment, the ceaseless movement of her lower garments betraying her unease. 

“He came here because he knew they were in danger. But - the reverse print, bleeding over his boots without shifting his stance - they were already dead.” She turned, gesturing. “Can you make it brighter?”

Nabooru stared fixedly at the center of the opposite wall as the candle lamps flared to full. There the charred shreds of some unlucky tapestry crowned a massive, grotesque silhouette burned into the plaster, the surface warped and bubbly with magic.

“So. You agree that dangerous Gerudo magic would not be wise to mention unless you wished war.” Zelda put steel in her words, presenting this as fact unarguable. “If we were to make an alliance work, this would be damning. Both whatever unknown thing unleashed its fury here, and the implied response to it.”

“Your pardon - I **_know_** what was here,” she said, eyes dangerously bright. “I suspected before - now I am certain. Your servant and anyone else who walked here afterwards were able only because of his **_dangerous Gerudo magic_** removing the blasphemy that visited this room.”

“Perhaps you might care to explain that. Should we start with how this blasphemy got here, or how the Gerudo tried to start a war?” Zelda shook her head. “Those are paths I do not believe will go well. Where would it end? When can we trust the other again? When everyone lies still and quiet for the last time? And if his magic saved us, then what would be different in what people currently believe? Ganondorf died saving us all from an isolated, unpredictable act of treason, still. What remains is to contain the damage and ensure this cannot revisit any of us, ever again.”

Nabooru winced. “So it would seem. The questions of why and how remain. You cannot be unaware that our kings are by definition-”

“I am **_exquisitely_** aware of the strength and power he embodied,” Zelda snapped. “You cannot argue one ambushed by fifteen plus whatever unnamed horror was here is some minor inconvenience.”

“I'm saying **_exactly_** that, Princess,” Nabooru growled, retracing her steps. “Are you dim-witted or are you under the delusion I am? What part of ‘ ** _why is my king on a bier_** ’ do you not understand?”

“And what part of ‘ _poison_ ’ and ‘ _plague_ ’ and ‘ _traitors_ ’ fails to translate? All men are mortal, even kings.”

Nabooru bared her teeth in a snarl, stalking past her into the next room without another word, following the long strides of her fallen king.


	6. Private Quarters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To understand the essence of war you need only consider the wind, which is ever swift, ready and able to reach every unguarded place.
> 
> Even without surprise, it is possible to master an enemy with ordered ranks and perfect readiness to attack if you first seize something your opponent holds dear. Then, as the wind forces all creatures to bow to her will, so your opponent will bend to yours.

The only carnage in the fourth room - or rather, rooms - lay in those distinctive boot prints striding without pause from the third to the fifth, stray elongated spatters accenting the slightly uneven beat. Nabooru checked each of the six tiny bedchambers in turn, finding more than enough in four of them to make her sick. 

Bracelets left under a pillow with treason woven into their pattern. A bottle half full of some black-purple roiling mess that she dared not touch. Crude pornographic graffiti carved into the inside tray of a clothes-chest - unremarkable in itself, unless you recognized the caricatures.

Then, it went beyond treason and well into blasphemy. 

 

Nabooru decided the rest of the personal guards’ rooms could wait.

 

-

 

The fifth room would have been almost comfortable, any other time. The warm golden wash on the bare plaster walls reminded Nabooru of home in a way the frothy plaster ‘drapery’ of the cold salon could not. The floor was even piled with vast flat-woven rugs under a scattering of smaller knotted ones. Another bed-couch stood in one corner by a window, facing an unmodified settle. Four massive glass-fronted bookcases stood around the room, overflowing. Weapon racks stood between, heavy with a variety of training pieces and treasured antiquities.

It was going to take months to go through it all. 

And that was without considering the contents of the massive campaign desk, which along with the X-brace chair truly dominated the space. Nabooru ran her fingertips over the familiar olive wood and bronze fittings. Of course he brought his own desk. What was an insult to neighboring royalty when none of their chairs fit?

For all she’d teased about Gan’s mess, she hadn't actually expected any. He was a fastidious man in every respect, even if he did have a habit of hoarding things. To see just three of the glass shelves left hanging open, half the books tumbling on the floor, that shocked her. The bloody bootprints pausing at the desk and then striding right over the papers drifting at its foot horrified her.

He knew. 

That stubborn son of a thrice-cursed wind  **_knew_ ** he’d taken a mortal blow.

She picked up one scattered paper, torn where the sharp heel of his riding boots pressed it deep into the rugs beneath. A middle page of some letter, written in competent, but excessively rigid Gerudo script. An argument against some impossible proposal from the Goron in the treaty negotiations, an unnamed concession that could not under any circumstance be bourne. 

Next to it, a sheet of foolscap covered on both sides in the flowing hand of the late king, much abused with strikethroughs and cramped notations. An early draft of his in reply - most of the omissions were too thoroughly excised to read, but the main purpose of his argument was clear enough. Hyrule’s current problems were  **_obviously_ ** exacerbated by her refusal to resolve a decade-old question that soured the ground between them. The implication of his substantial efforts to censor and restrain every expression of feeling almost as soon as it began burned through his attempts to excise it, until what should have been a dry recitation of political realities glowed with the passion it veiled.

“You are aware our King was not by nature a patient man,” Nabooru began, tongue dry as the sand sea.

“He never made a habit of hiding that,” said Zelda from the doorway. “He was always as honest as his position permitted, and a quick wit. Not that most of my people realized the fact.”

“Then your people are idiots,” said Nabooru, putting both pages back where she’d found them. Four more pages selected at random reflected the same sharp, layered debate regardless of the immediate challenge being dissected between the correspondents. 

A stray complement on improved calligraphy, buried in a strikethroughs in the closure of a letter about some Zora dramatics clenched the matter. Gan dispensed praise more rarely than the sands gave over golden rupees. When exactly had the idea of a more intimate alliance ceased to be about expediency?

“I would recommend a - small libation before proceeding. Or perhaps more than a small one.”

Nabooru frowned, turning to find the princess somehow across the room entirely, folding back the doors of a tall and narrow bar cabinet she’d overlooked before. It had been half hidden by the shadows of the glass-fronted bookcases flanking it, and from its stark lines she’d taken it for a closed weapon rack of some kind.

“You mean you don't want me sober,” said Nabs.

“You might not want you sober, either. I know I am not fond of the idea. Such pleasures can draw tempers back from hazards. Among other notable qualities.”

Nabooru moved around the desk to see which bottle she chose. She expected a red Hylian wine, or a refined cordial - majir even. 

The princess moved all of these to draw forward a gold glass bottle of King’s Tears, and poured two full measures for each of them without asking her preference. 

“Now I know for certain you don't want me to see something,” Nabooru said. “But why would  _ you _ blush? Didn't you already examine all these rooms, to seal them?”

Zelda shook her head slowly. “I did not take long at it. And. This next room saw your king's last breath. I - am still trying to come to terms with that - and that he was stubborn enough to wrestle his problems alone rather than get help from his allies.”

Zelda raised the glass, looking skyward as if offering thanks to the goddesses, and at once drained half of it.

If anything, that made a survey of the next room more imperative. Nabooru left the exquisite, delicate glass of King’s Tears untouched and instead folded back the dressing room doors.

The smeared arc where he’d rested his hand on them for balance and support hurt to see - but the toppled washstand and broken pottery burned.

 

-

 

Zelda waited in the silence, replaying her own nightmares while Nabooru acquired one for herself. When she did return, it was as one still dreaming. She accepted her abandoned glass of King’s Tears without comment, without seeming to even see it, but when Zelda raised her own renewed glass in toast, Nabooru did the same, draining the powerful distilled spirits in one long pull.

She did at least have the grace to cough, after.

“He did not share this easily. But - he insisted I know what it is. I cannot say it is precisely _**enjoyable**_ , but it … grows on you, I suppose.”

Zelda lifted the bottle slightly off the surface in offering to Nabooru. She held out her empty glass for another with dry eyes. But of course - she had been the ranking General of his armies for years. Such a life had its own costs, however different from her own.

“I've had dreams every so often. Of seeing the room, the footsteps, the handprints.  Everywhere. On every surface.”

Nabooru took a long draught before answering. “No doubt they will follow me to the end of my days. Did you see the papers?”

“I had, yes. Both were from my hand. One recent - relaying word of border issues toward the north. I thought it was small and trivial. Now, I'm not sure if it was coincidence. The other, under the - the-” Zelda found her throat gone suddenly dry. All there was at hand to soothe it was her third glass of King’s Tears. A mistake - yet one with its own twisted logic. She drank of its fire, knowing the heat would reflect on her face. 

But wasn't that excusable, in such dire circumstance? 

Human, to encounter difficulty, even if it was over an innocent piece of furniture that didn't have any choice in its fate?

But monarchs were not supposed to be like lesser mortals. They were to remain perfect, pure, removed from the distractions and corruptions of the world.

Gan would never have shown such weakness.

_ But I _ , thought Zelda,  _ am not like him _ .

She gave up on naming the chaise lounge - Nabooru knew where the crushed, bloodstained letter lay.

“An old invitation to the utilize the winter cessation to better advantage. To fight with words rather than weapons. I'm not sure what connection he might have seen. If any.”

“You said something about delirium. When did that begin? Not at the masque, surely, but-”

“I would not be so certain. Towards the end of the melee his style - changed. Not just slower - more whirling, if that makes any sense - but I only saw from a distance. The fever was already terrible when my servant managed to track him here, and by the time the physician was roused and brought, he was muttering ceaselessly.”

“So,” said Nabooru, looking at her glass like she wasn't quite sure how it got there. “From the moment you both realized something was off about that pavane, about two candlemarks to the beginning of his defeat. No more than three.”

“It was twice that before the first physician began to show signs of… disturbance, but he did not have the disadvantage of injury. We lost three of our own guard to the same pestilence around that hour, and four more before the night closed.”

Nabooru nodded, sipping her drink with a distracted air. “Whatever else may be gleaned from it, you can be reasonably certain his last thoughts centered on you. For whatever slim comfort that might be.”

“I rather think the notes more closely united by the centrality of the Gerudo cause than the hand of their author,” she returned with as much grace as she could manage. “He was ever a king first. For whatever slim comfort that might bring. And had he lived - well, that would only be guessing, and I have not yet had quite enough to drink for idle speculation.”

Zelda decided to amend that by draining the last bit of her current glass.

“Yeah,” Nabs agreed. “The second unlucky healer you sent - the Zora. How’d they take all of this?”

“Poorly. More so when they saw his… condition. The effect was apparently very like a corruption the Goron have used against them in darker days than this, but that toxin doesn't work the same way on humans. Unfortunately, we have since also discovered records of Zora experimentation towards adapting the plague for their several neighbors - the head alchemist in question was given to the gods some years ago, but many of their apprentices escaped.”

“And they didn't think their overking might need to know about it?” 

“Of course not. That was in the early years of this fickle peace,” Zelda said. Either her bitterness or the drink was starting to curl her tongue. “Why show your full strength when the war might reignite with the spring thaw?”

Nabooru sighed, lifting her glass for another pull. She stared absently at the enormous olivewood desk and the chaos around it as the silence settled over them both.

“They want us all at each other's throats, as it's been for generations. So,” she said, turning a significant glance towards the open bar cabinet. “Seems we have some terms to settle between us that can't leave these rooms after all, and I'm not sure I'm interested in discussing it sober.”

“There is still another room to-”

“Yeah. I saw his seal on it,” Nabooru interrupted, raising the remains of her glass with a mirthless grin. “ _ **Private to the crown**_ indeed.”


	7. The Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Choosing ground and advancing a battle shares more with the composition of clever arguments than you allow - the same ruthless hand which is necessary to write well, the same sensitivity to moment and weight and purpose which gives your prose meaning - these are the virtues you must forge into your sword.

Zelda studiously poured herself another drink as she felt her ears burn, trying to avoid looking at the woman across from her and failing.

“It's - I mean. There are some portions of the contract that was that are exceedingly difficult to see to, now. But alliances. Yes, those are good.”

“Do go on. I believe we will need to manufacture some more public proof of your good will and sincere concern for my people at least equal to your care for Hylians. We may as well begin with whatever arrangement you intended before.”

Zelda felt the ice settle over her, and she could see by Nabooru’s subtle smirk that her face had lost all color. What was it with these desert thieves that they so easily shattered decades of carefully honed control?

“Th-that would be fairly easy for some bits. Water, food, land for an embassy within the capitol… and other things that would be scandalous. As - as for proof of good will, the first supply is nearly ready to depart. And a state funeral as if he were our own king. Surely this is a beginning, yes?”

“We don't want charity wagons. We want access to the river direct, and abolish the export tax on grain and cheese,” said Nabooru, gesturing towards the bed-couch and benches tucked under the windows. “Don't be coy, Princess. We can discuss the situation of the embassy at leisure - the scandalous details are far more pressing. Are you with child?”

"I don't - There were…precautions taken. And anyways it isn't charity. They are a gift. The treaty demands a fair payment for all goods, but this is a special-"

“You Hylians and your damn obsession with purity and rules and passionless, cold light. The treaty may well depend on what I learn tonight. Do you have any idea how hard it will be to convince our people you didn't orchestrate this when they find out you laid down with our king and got up barren?”

Zelda eyed the bottle. “Oh, I am sure it will be much worse if they guess how often I was barren."

"How long since you bled?"

"I - I'm sure I can't say. I've been unwell and-"

"Unwell how? Prevarication is only making this take longer. Might cost more lives, Princess."

Zelda tightened her jaw. Had she no restraint whatever? Such a shocking absence of sensibility in a woman seared her nerves. And yet. It was almost thrilling, to hear plain speech again, and be invited to speak likewise.  
"The comforts and pleasures of the people are no longer mine. The strain of these days bars my rest and appetite both. There is little enough I can choke down since before the masque."

"Of course. And your delicate sensibilities must deny it could be-"

"It has happened before and meant as little,” said Zelda, wandering to the shuttered windows. Tightly sealed, just as she’d left it - but she checked each latch to be certain, frowning at the uneven fit of the louvers where repairs had been necessary over the years. “Life in this court - this castle - is not so easy as you might imagine. As this ground bears ample witness."

Nabooru made a rude noise and peered into her glass, casting a significant look over its rim at Zelda’s. “He was right. You drag out your decisions three and four times as long as you ought and now you've the wages of it. A damn shame. How much of your ponderous delays are because of His Majesty your father, since apparently your objections to the match weren't as ascetic and maidenly as you wanted us to think?”

“He’s been unwell, these last few years, goddesses grant him peace,” said Zelda, draining the dregs and contemplating the wisdom of another. That would make five - and inside a candlemark - and yet. Why not? “His mood is quicksilver, and in one hour approving of the union, only to forbid it the next. Th’damn advisors can’t advance choices before all that. For my own objections to the match? I knew years ago I’d be married to one underking or other to strengthen a treaty. For all Ganondorf was insufferable, I liked him. And still I wished daily to remove that smug smile from his face.”

“Princess, I think anybody who ever met him must have made the same wish at least once.”

Zelda offered a wry grin. “Even so. My say in the matter has only been a … recent development, as I have taken on more responsibilities from my father.”

“And how many are left?” Nabooru tilted her head, golden eyes bright and steady. How many had she downed? Four? Five? “He hasn't bestirred himself to sit in audience since the masque, I hear.”

“I don't believe I've had enough to drink to be discussing that,” Zelda returned with an affected air of arch superiority.

Five would be anything but wise. Her mind already began to feel slippery, and she imagined she could feel the slow thrumming pulse of the sleeping castle around them. It would not slumber if it understood what passed within its walls. Wasn't that just like stone, to be indifferent to everything important?

“Our highest concern must be the preservation of peace, and securing all our lands from the chance of any further treachery. His sacrifice must be given meaning, draw us close where evil would have made him divide us. I - it is well I am not like to grow large now, so I may remain a neutral party in our several clients’ negotiations-”

“What if you weren't?” Nabooru took up the golden bottle, stalking to the bed-couch. “As I understand you, one of the larger hazards of a public engagement lay in negating your value as bait and bargaining chit. No offense.”

“None taken,” said Zelda, moving to join her. “Though you must understand that value as somewhat diminished by whatever intimate histories - real or imagined - such a state will suggest to the other powers in question.”

Nabooru made a rude noise and dropped heavily onto the piles of - crimson! - cushions. “More like raise it by proving your health and fertility - and thus the vigor of Hyrule itself. What fool prince and lording wouldn't then crave the favors of a beautiful young widow for his own?”

“Pfah!” Zelda advanced on her opponent, tilting her empty glass in accusation. “Half a mark ago it was ‘skinny’ and ‘milk-faced’.”

“Don't distract me,” said Nabooru with a wide grin. “Even after you marry, so long as you raise the child to power, and you'll have the hearts of the People. Care for their kin, and you’ll have our loyalty. So you're partial to the kin of your firstborn - who isn't? You’ll double your army and triple your land in so doing. Woe to them that stand against us.”

“A clever gambit - but you speculate over spilled milk, as it were.” Zelda sank into the cushions beside the other woman, arranging her layered skirts almost by reflex. She hated these trappings sometimes - often! - but there was a certain soothing quality to the routine maintenance of her regalia. Her thoughts settled best when the rest of her was in motion - another thin slice of priceless common ground now lost. “There is no child, and no other Gerudo man to conscript. I doubt even hysterics and doubled mourning would convince anyone, as my reputation is… unfortunately still pure enough not even my closest attendants question the state of my health.”

Nabooru rolled her eyes, uncorking the bottle to pour them each a fresh measure. “If you're so averse to bearing, I'm sure we can arrange a more dramatic loss. You’ll have to choose a stud soon, so you’ll show before the seasons turn. I can recommend Cafei if you haven't one of your own on retainer. We wouldn't need a child or a seedling-child to pass muster for most people, and not even all with spirit vision. Though if you choose to keep it, well. Spinning was his talent, not mine, so we’ll both have an easier time if you’ll entertain the introduction and maybe more. Their discretion is above reproach - served beside me these twenty years.”

Zelda stopped midway into raising the refilled glass and stared at Nabooru. “But - she is lacking certain… How would that even …?”

“Din grant me patience,” muttered Nabooru, shaking her head. “I imagine the mechanics of planting seeds are reasonably similar among all peoples, but there's no accounting for exotic tastes. Caifei may be more delicately built than you're accustomed to, but entirely capable. I give you my personal assurance, yeah?”

Zelda stared at Nabooru for a moment, feeling the heat rise in her face. In full mourning and half veiled to signal their sword oaths, many of the delegates were difficult to tell apart - but Nabooru had two close attendants. Avish clearly served as a guard - her charms entirely eclipsed by solid, chiseled muscle. Cafei was the more willowy one, just as clearly more of an administrator or functionary, easy to pick out because they always wore a short jacket with boxy sleeves. A lovely example of her kind, but other than the jacket, Zelda had dismissed her as unremarkable.

Another mistake for the growing list.

“I think the King’s Tears must be corrupting me. I … I can imagine quite distinctly some of… er … matters I learned. Which is scandalous! Especially to imagine - the impropriety… Such exotic… Oh my.” Zelda turned even further away, her voice quiet. “Oh goddesses. What is wrong with me?”

“Four glasses of Tears and a lifetime of bowing to the light priests no doubt,” said Nabooru with a wry grin. “Another thing I want addressed, actually. He never agreed that your theology was just as dangerous as your politics, so I doubt he bothered to drag the matter into your … extensive correspondence.”

“We did begin to speak of it, not long before his ray falling into shadow. The Goddesses handed down this way of life, yes? I mean - if we left it, wouldn't we be out of their light? Wouldn't we become evil?”

Nabooru laughed, short and sharp. “You always talk like there’s a single golden way. I guess your priests do tell it so, like there aren't a dozen different sorts of people just inside your own borders. You know that's at least half the reason for this war right? Why your laws are always troubled and your court always arguing over the same disputes, year after bloody year?”

Zelda scrunched up her nose in thought, fighting through the drink’s haze.  
”I know history well enough. We’ve long relied on the advice of priests to guide us in times of trouble. But. There’s been war. Every spring. I am to lead - I must consider all possibilities of - of treason, n’matter how well intentioned. The throne - Hyrule - is nothing without its people. All its people. What harms them, it harms us… harms me - and thus Hyrule.”

“I know you people are fond of riddles and poetry, but seems to me that only leads to muddled thinking and misunderstandings.”

Zelda looked Nabooru over, edging a little closer to the other woman, careful not to spill her glass.

“I need an... advisor what thinks of other ways t’do a thing. Who will annoy Lord Elapidan and every other stuffed hen in my court. Maybe introduce a few new… spices. An’ fight. Very important thing, fighting. Interested?”

“Princess, I do believe you're drunk,” said Nabooru with a wolfish grin. “If I didn't know better I might mistake that for a flirtation. Good thing this is strictly a diplomatic arrangement, yeah?”

“Oh yes, absolutely,” said Zelda, tossing her head and assuming courtly airs. “Strictly a matter of tactical advantage. I would never even **_think_** of mourning his lost virtues, much less your golden lips, scandal and blasphemy I'm sure, but in service to our country, certain sacrifices must be made.”

“Hn,” said Nabooru, raising her glass for a toast. “To strategic kisses, yeah?”

Zelda raised her own glass in salute, and then a delicate sip. It really wasn't poetry, calling this distilled spirit Tears - it burned and soothed in the same drop, clear to the bone. Her words fell from her tongue before she realized they were even in her mind.

“I doubt even half of them count as kisses outside your exceptionally charitable definition. But our discretion is above reproach in every respect, I assure you."

Nabooru coughed in surprise - or startled offense? - and spilled a scattering of bright drops from her glass. The strong spirits formed ephemeral golden gems across the wool of her taut tunic, beading and sinking away unregarded by their host.

“Now I **_know_** you're drunk,” said Nabooru, but she said it with a smile in her voice. “I’ll confess I never expected you'd be quite so forward without your shadow beside you, and grief on your shoulders too. Not that I mind the idea of a tumble, as I've had not a moment to myself in months, but-”

“You're the one what spoke of the virtues of **_discretion_** -”

“As much as I’d enjoy annoying your light priests, wouldn't serve my people much good if you greet the morning with regrets as well as an aching head. When you remember all the things that divide our nations, your laws and your priests-”

“Maybe I don't like all the things the priests say,” she snapped. “That one girl. Ruto. The Zora princess. Said she's engaged to a Hylian. Her father rolls his eyes but doesn't say no. So are we the only ones saying no?”

“Engaged is one word for it,” Nabooru said with a wry grin. “Zelda, we have a proverb, maybe Gan told you about it. You are what you embrace - and it’s **_your_** sages that spend their hours making lists of corruptions and temptations and dangers and sins, nurturing hate and suspicion and greed with their judgement and their fences around people's lives. For all they call themselves light, nearly everything they say seems to be about shadow.”

Zelda paled, putting her hand on Nabooru’s and squeezing. She knew, she had to know - or she would soon - she suddenly needed Nabooru to know everything - even as she felt her heart grow heavy with the certainty that the seeds of their friendship would wither under the fire of her hatred. “We need to talk about this when I'm sober. Shadow priests are unacceptable, do you understand? There is an old story, the reason why the guardians of truth are so few, a great betrayal and even greater cost - **_unacceptable_** , do you understand?”

Nabooru frowned, taking Zelda’s glass from her nerveless fingers and setting both atop the elegant and much-abused writing case on the spindly table at her side. She lowered her voice to barely more than a whisper of breath, her golden eyes pinning Zelda’s very soul to the spot.

“ ** _Sheikah_** ,” she said.

Zelda could not speak - her tongue fused to the roof of her mouth and her throat closed. Reflexively, she began to resettle her skirts with her free hand, racing through her mental lists for the right answer to ready for when her voice answered her command again.

Nabooru’s gaze dropped - to lips - to throat - to breast - and dropped again - and the brightness of her golden eyes dimmed, then doubled. A sure sign of the sacred spirit sight in her, just as the kokiri prophet said.

And then.

Zelda’s thoughts fell away entirely in the immediacy of smothering warmth as Nabooru captured her in her strong arms and laid forge-hot benedictions on her lips.


	8. Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The essence of victory is determination. Hone your will upon every stone in your path, and never yield your true object. Consider every obstacle, every winding track, every retreat, as another lesson which when mastered will become an arrow in your quiver.
> 
> You will not find source of defeat in examining essential natures, but in a study of who prepares, and who does not.

Morning rose up with vengeful fury, clamouring with the resonant shudder of too many bells overlaid by the skirling wail of brass horns. Nabooru hauled herself upright by main force, stumbling when the curtain tore. She swore, blinking back the fog of drink and too little sleep, prowling through the murk of the strange room towards the faint but unmistakable sound of boots.

Lots of boots.

Cold gray saw light filtered through the half-closed louvered shutters, tinted an ethereal purple by the wards carved into each frame. There was something deeply wrong about any magic that survived its caster. Nabooru swore under her breath as she hefted one curved sword to ready. The reek of char and burned feathers coiled sluggishly from under the closed door, taunting her with fragmented memories of midnight follies.

“Damnit Herbert, can you try being ineffective? Just **_once_**?” Zelda snarled, somewhat muffled by the fact she was pulling down-filled coverlets and ermine furs over her head as she said it.

Nabooru eased the door open, trying not to breathe too much of the foul air beyond. The light wasn't any better out there, maybe even a little worse. A hammering directly ahead, obscured by distance and dark and thick smoke.

“Mother of sands,” she said, her voice harsh and thin. “All real.”

“And all too early. I’ll need to promote him, the bastard.”

Nabooru clicked the door shut again, throwing the bolt. It wouldn't buy more than a few moments, but those might count. “This all part of your design, Princess?”

“No,” she said, heaving a dramatic sigh. A couple heartbeats passed in strained silence. She pulled the covers aside and pushed herself half upright, her fine wheat-gold hair making a wildly tangled halo around her cream rosepetal face. “I tried to send him on holiday. A precaution only - to give you room to rage and grieve and drink and argue without overzealous guards misunderstanding grief for threat or a hangover for a poisoning.”

“I meant this,” she said, gesturing with her free hand to encompass the whole of the dark room, and everything in it. Her head felt as though bees had decided to take residence inside, and mix their honey with molten lead. She swore privately never to touch King's Tears again, or at least not for a month.

“Of course not," Zelda rolled her eyes with an irritated sigh. "My plans stretched only as far as making the space necessary to show you the messy truth. Which obviously can't be in the public reports.”

“Obviously,” she agreed, trying to figure out how to address the other issues at hand. The more immediate ones. Like where her pants were.

“It's **_my damn castle_** and if I wish to set fire to it no one is going to stop me.”

“So you've made abundantly clear," she said, grinding the heel of one hand against her brow for what little relief that offered as she set the sword aside on the spindly half-moon table by the door. "I hope your translocation spell worked. Some of those books-”

“Priceless. I know. They're safe in the royal archive, distributed throughout. No one will notice the exchanges I've made - poorly circulated second printings, the worst of the books on accounting methods and storehouse management, ill-conceived memoirs and the like.” She brushed her hair back from her face, plucking one strand from her tongue with a mou of distaste. “He better have brought willow bark tea.”

“Yeah,” Nabs agreed, stooping to gather up discarded clothes. Silk. More silk. Linen that wasn't hers. Silk. "Won't help with the scandal though. Shit. You better magic yourself out of here by the same road - don't know how long that door will hold them. I’ll take the window if I can and spin a tale if I can't.”

“I'm not sorry.”

Nabooru stopped a moment, dumping the silks onto the enormous featherbed as she struggled to parse that. “I - Princess, I can't be- look. You're young, and I know your situation's not exactly an easy one, yeah? But the only decision either of us needs to make right now is which path to take out of here. I should never have-”

“It’s not **_fair_**. To **_not do_** anything of any importance. Always **_No_** , always **_Don't_** , always **_proper_** and **_seemly_** and **_objective_** and **_pure_** , always-!” Zelda punctuated every protest with her fist hammering into the featherbed, her fair features taut and sour with displeasure. “These things - thoughts - desires - dreams - they can't **_all_** be evil. He said they weren’t. Happens all the time. Natural as rain. Except in Hyrule. Why?”

Zelda's impassioned protest made her seem even younger than she was, sparking painful memory of another voice, another naive youth, convinced the world can and must change its pattern to their design. For a moment Nabooru thought she even saw a shimmer of light on the Princess' hand, as if she'd invoked her wild lightborn magic. Against her better judgment, she closed the distance between them, smoothing back the chaos of Zelda's fine wheat-gold hair.

“There is evil in this world, have no doubt of that," she said, bending to kiss Zelda's forehead - chaste, as she should have remained last night. They were both grieving - and both of them had traitors to hunt. Apparently. If there was ever a time to avoid entanglements, this was a prime example. "Your traditions are different than ours - I have my own opinions of your doctrine and law, but I can't say yours must change any more than you should say it of mine. I'm no mage to read your heart, and no priest, neither.”

“If it makes people happy, that couldn't be evil, right? What can it hurt, just some kisses and things? Where is the evil, Nabooru? Where is it?”

“Well,” said Nabooru, drawing out the sound to buy time. Always **_time_** \- she resumed her desperate hunt for dark clothing in a dim room, trying not to think about Hylian soldiers breaking down doors, shifting makeshift barricades of half-burned furnishings. What in the nine hells had possessed her? The girl was halfway to being a priestess - Hylians had a thing about maidens in their religion - Gan had been a law unto himself, but what excuse had she? Aside from heartbreak and fear and need marring a pair of enormous blue eyes. “Not sure those all count as kisses, kitten. But they weren't bad, for a novice.”

Zelda hurled a cushion at her head with surprising accuracy and force. Someone wasn't even a quarter as delicate as her public performances implied. Interesting. So it wasn't just dancing sculpting the pale flesh she hid under that elaborate court dress. “I'm not a kitten. I'm a **_lion._** ”

Nabooru laughed, trying to untangle one slashed skirt from another, hoping her undergarments might be found in the middle of the knot. And socks. Socks would be important climbing about on rooftops in winter. “We have proverbs about lions. Your excuse for preferment - for justice for us - is dead now, in no small part because you wouldn't accept his offer where anyone else could see. I have no interest in following his example."

Zelda snatched up Nabooru's purple tunic and stuffed it behind her, out of reach. Her stubborn expression would have been charming any other morning. One less marred by a towering hangover and angry soldiers outside of bedroom doors.

" ** _Fine._** You want proof of my claws? To the nether hells with discretion. I promised alliance - as did you. So. Marry me."

"Zelda - now is not the time-" Nabooru turned, losing the thread of her argument to the sharp shattering sound from the dressing room.

"I failed to secure peace once - I won't allow it to happen again."

"Open in the name of the crown!"

"Please," she said, her earnest serenity in sharp contrast to the desperate moment, as axes and mage-bolts crashed into the once-beautiful mahogany doors.

"Kitten-" Nabooru turned away, stomach rebelling against the bitter price of offering comfort to the enemy.

 ** _Crash._**  
Flying splinters.  
The screech of steel cleaving brass.  


Nabooru lifted her chin, wrapping herself in the armor of battle-mind. Pity no one would witness the contest. It would make one hell of a drinking song.

The burly, mustachioed leader of the guard pushed his way through the wreckage of the doors, hefting his two-handed axe with menace. Light bloomed behind him - one of the other soldiers thrust a lantern into the room, hooked through the banner-eyes welded to their spear-point.

" ** _You-!_** Halt - hands in the air, woman-!"

Nabooru clasped her hands behind her head, moving into a shard of purple-tinted light to give the man a healthy distraction.

"Traitor - do not attempt to escape!" He growled with practiced menace. The others wore ridiculous kettle helms - but this one? He wore his dark curls like a crown, and his gray eyes held none of the hate his words would otherwise imply. Clever boy, or at least well-trained. "What have you done with the Princess?"

She leered at him, canting her hips and shoulders in opposition as she slipped free the darts hidden in her heavy braid. "Would you like a list?"

His gaze unfortunately didn't wander - but several of the others' did. Damn.

"Nabooru of the Gerudo Thieves," he bellowed, a little too theatrically, pointing with his axe. Who was he performing for? Not his unit - they were all veterans of the wars, hard-eyed and scarred, no doubt on castle duty to transition them towards retirement and pensions. Not the sort to be impressed by grand gestures - or pleas for mercy. "You are hereby under arrest for trespass, vandalism, arson, kidnapping, treason, and murder. Surrender quietly and the arbiters may be persuaded to work swiftly."

Murder? "That's Exalted Sun Nabooru to you, boy, and I'm not sure I've ever done a thing quietly in my life."

"Silence your evil tongue, woman. Save your petitions for the ghosts of all you've wronged. On your knees. **_Now_**."

"Mmmmno," she said, taking a step toward him. More pikes bristled at the door, and the forward unit dropped their hips to set their strength. Damn. "Don't believe I'm in the mood."

"Such **_vile_** slander Captain Herbert," sang a dulcet voice. "You should be ashamed of yourself. What would your mother think?"

Why had she not run? What was she thinking?

"My queen-" he began, no more daunted by her rebuke than he was by the sight of two sovereign rulers in dishabille.

The other soldiers were not so certain.

"You're going to need to make up your mind Herbert." A scroup and rustle behind her confirmed Zelda's headstrong commitment to folly. "Is my lord father gone to the golden lands or not? And who gave you permission to shatter royal wardlocks? To disturb the questionable peace at uncivilized hours?"

Half the unit dropped to their knees, their faces bright with awe. They did not, however, lower their weapons.

Herbert only shifted his grip on the axe, eyes flicking between his opponent and his sovereign.

"Enlighten us all, yeah? Since your lovely Princess is in fine health," Nabooru gestured broadly, tucking the darts between her fingers, praying the shadow spell forged into them still held. "Last I checked we're all standing in her castle. My barbaric little brain can't untangle who I'm supposed to have kidnapped."

"My queen, the castle is on fire-"

"Don't exaggerate, Herbert. It's a terrible habit," Zelda said gently, sweeping past Nabooru to push the axe aside with a single fingertip on its spine. She seemed to have gained a light of her own, a soft glow that turned her hair to spun gold. She wore nothing but the red and gold sun crown brocade coverlet, draped casually around hips and thrown over one shoulder. Yet she was the living embodiment of royal in that moment. "How did he die?"

 _ **Now**_ the man flinched, gray eyes flicking towards the shattered door. "Her dagger in the night, my queen."

"Ownership of a blade is in no way evidence of the hand which applied it. The Exalted Nabooru has been attending us," she said, sweeping her imperious gaze over the lot of them. Spears wavered, then snapped skyward to attention with a ragged thump. "We have a traitor in our court, Herbert."


	9. Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even if it seems certain that you will lose, strike. Wisdom has no place in a choice between life and death - to even consider that you may be inferior is to invite defeat. Choose death. 
> 
> Only then will you understand war.

“My queen, the castle is on fire-"

Every step threatened to pull her down, and the purple-tinted light fell red-hot on her aching eyes. The pounding of her headache increased measure for measure with her determination to ignore it. Because of course it did.

"Don't exaggerate, Herbert. It's a terrible habit," Zelda fought to untangle her mind from the fog of too much of the Tears and too little rest. At least she didn’t have anything else in her stomach that could rebel. She pushed Herbert’s axe aside, calling a tiny thread of power to improve her focus. It crawled over her skin, and her empty stomach clenched uncomfortably. The price would be high - the price was always high.

Yet it must be paid. The monarch must never lose control. "How did he die?"

Herbert flinched under her appraisal - precious little disturbed the man, and she doubted he felt anything for her father deeply enough that he would grieve. He was too honorable to ever admit of it, but he’d served in the castle guard more than long enough to observe his deteriorating faculties. And close enough to ignore what did and did not gather dust in her stillroom.

"Her dagger in the night, my queen," he said, and his eyes betrayed his faith that she would understand what he did _**not**_   say. She would _**make**_   him accept a promotion this time. General Herbert had a - perhaps not a ring, precisely - but a _**rightness**_ to it.

"Ownership of a blade is in no way evidence of the hand which applied it,” she said, thinking swiftly. She’d known the burning of the state rooms would attract some notice, but he’d led his unit directly to the bedchamber, fully expecting to take responsibility for Nabooru before anyone else could. He clearly hadn’t forgiven himself for his failure to preserve the peace at the masque.

“The Exalted Nabooru has been attending us," she declared, sweeping her imperious gaze over the lot of them. Spears wavered as the significance of her words worked their way into thick skulls. None of the guards could be ignorant of the nature of the company they’d been at, but her acknowledgement lent the situation a new gravity. Who were they to question the Queen’s choice to entertain bedmates? Or her preference as to their nature?

No one, they each decided, rightly. Spears snapped skyward with a ragged thump as they realized her declaration overruled whatever other orders they’d been given.

A new pressure built, uniquely distressing as only shadow magic could be. She prayed for time, keeping her voice as level and cool as possible. "We have a traitor in our court, Herbert."

“The gates were secured before first light, my Queen, the servants’ ways sealed. Second division is maintaining quarantine. I took the liberty of signalling the temple when - my Queen-!”

The pressure swelled, pressing on her from every side, eating through her magic as she tried vainly to bolster her wards. Everything was too bright. She could barely see - Herbert was reaching to catch her, but he was too far away.

Nabooru swore - something colorful about goats.

Zelda tried to laugh, and choked instead

The pressure released without warning, leaving her bereft of anything. Sensation, light, sound - all was swallowed by the endless hungry void.

 

\- o - O - o -

 

Zelda fell to her knees, glad that at least there was something beneath her now. She clawed at the formless, shifting blackness, but that availed her no more than her magic.

Three attempts to use her strongest spell - to transport herself to the set-circle inlaid into the marble floor of the shrine at the top of the central tower.

So far, she was at three failures.

She’d counted her own breaths until the dizziness had made her lose her place. Pity - she’d been nearing a thousand. She thought.

She’d known at once she’d been transported somewhere - around five hundred she’d begun to see, a little, and realized it wasn’t a pure void space. Now, she could see vague charcoal mist lazing about with the idle wind, and distant flickers of dove gray against the blackness. Still, her ears caught not even the smallest of sounds, and all sensation was muted to such faint traces that she could not be confident she wasn’t imagining it.

She screamed in frustration. Silence swallowed her voice - but at least she could feel her throat becoming raw, feel the wind fill her and empty out again.

Zelda hauled herself to her feet, vaguely wondering if the pain she couldn’t feel now would be waiting for her in the world when she returned to it. If she returned to it.

She screamed again, giving vent to her grief, her rage.

The world moved.

She gave a faint prayer of thanks that she couldn’t fall any further than to land rump-first in an undignified sprawl.

The world stood still again.

She looked for any sign of what had upset her balance - smoke boiled up in the darkness, rushing towards her with the flickering of lightning that was somehow devoid of light.

No wind rose with it.

“ _Shit,_ ” she said, amused to discover the sharpness of the word had a cathartic pleasure even without a voice behind it. Small wonder Nabooru swore readily and often. Her people had no particular disdain for pleasure. Nabs would make fun of her discovering this so late. Gan - he would ask if she ventured an opinion on the Crown or merely the person under it.

Absurd, really, but the whatever-it-was could easily mean a true death. What matter disordered thoughts in such a time? Hyrule was no more nor less in peril for it.

Zelda called the crumbs of her magic - she couldn’t feel it answer her - she couldn’t feel much of anything - she rose, settling into guard, trusting that the magic had come. That when she flung it at the threat, it would do _**something**_. Anything to aid her.

Not that her transport spells had done anything but drain her.

The smoke rolled forward, inexorable, gathering to form a face. Hollow eyes, wide mouth, sharp nose -

She felt a stone form at her core - the most profound sensation since she’d been sent to this void - and wished fervently that she hadn’t.  
The face stopped with an abruptness she should have expected. That long nose would have touched her in another heartbeat.

Had she not flinched, first.

“So,” he said, and it rattled her as thunder from a groundstrike perilously close.

“ _You’re alive_ ,” she said, but the void stole her voice as before.

His shadow-eyes locked with hers, somehow bright and dark at once. He didn’t need to hear her, to know what she said. Or the breathless disbelief with which she said it.

The smoke rippled, condensing into a shadow of the whole man, leaner than she’d ever known him. He towered over her, and she braced herself for a strike which never descended.

“I will return,” he said, defying the void to silence _**him**_.

She reached for him - undecided whether she felt fear or hope - but her hand passed through the smoke with nothing more than a faint tickle of magic.

He bent, threading the fingers of his right hand through her unbound hair - somehow! - claiming her lips with his own. She could feel nothing more than the tease of power, but she tasted blood on her tongue. Another stone pressed on her heart as she realized he - or whatever was left of him - remembered _**everything**_.

“ _My father -_ ”

“Dead,” he rumbled, standing again. “He passed along these roads not long ago.”

“ _Help me_ ,” she said.

“I should have destroyed that harp the moment I laid eyes on it,” he said.

“ _Please,_ ” she said. “ _If Hyrule falls into shadow, all will be lost_.”

“Hn,” he said. “Go.”

The sound lanced through her as a lightning strike, burning cold, and she fell, weightless once more in the endless darkness.

 

\- o - O - o -

 

A blink later, it was over.

His magic. The darkness. The silence. The disconnection of sensation. So also the headache.

Another heartbeat or three, and she began to make sense of what her eyes told her of the smoky room she'd landed in - and found herself nose-to-nose with a stunned cook, cleaver in hand.

The sense of weight didn’t return.

Neither did her clothes.

Blanket.

Whatever.

“Damn,” she said, and for once she didn’t mind her voice wavering.

“Aye,” agreed the cook, with a long blink.

Zelda pushed back the memory of what she had seen the other woman manage with a simple kitchen cleaver on the last campaign.

“Ulus, pick the two strongest hearts of your people and come with me. Everyone else, do not under any circumstances leave this kitchen until I myself return.”

Zelda held her head high, too aware of the eyes on her. She tried to tell herself this was not far different from any other servant helping her bathe or dress. Mostly inconvenient if a more elevated witness was about.

Or if she had ended up in a dining hall.

Ulus nodded and turned. “Tam and Lutu, fall in. And someone get the princess a smock. And cover your damn eyes Darim, you lech.”

The kitchen became a whirlwind, and she stood at the eye of it. The young, freckled one soon bristled with knives, and the broad one hefted a tapered rolling pin with every appearance of pleasure. A flash of white flew from hand to hand across the room, under the pot racks and over the tables, and Ulus herself shrugged into a coat of lightweight maile meant to protect against accidents in the abattoir.

Which, all things considered, wasn’t entirely far from the mark.

It made Zelda wonder just what the cooks got up to, to make this all seem practiced and planned.

Questions for another time.

Tam bowed, holding the smock for her to duck into, face red. “Begging your pardon Your Majesty. It’s got flour on it, but only that. Maybe some sugar.”

“That will be fine,” she said, surprised to find the heavy linen crisp and smooth against her bare skin. It was much too large - Tam helped her roll and button the sleeves up, and still the hem fell only to mid-thigh. Absolutely scandalous.

The broad one bowed awkwardly. “You want some clogs, Your Majesty?”

“She certainly does not,” said Ulus. “What if she needs to run, our Queen?”

He blushed fiercely, all the way to the tips of his ears, and bowed even lower. “Sorry, sorry, just the stones is hard, Sorry-”

“Don't you dare let the dough fall before you even get it on the oven tiles Darim,” Ulus bellowed at the room. “And mind the meringue. It needs another ten minutes of beating! Hop to!”

Zelda accepted the wicked wrought iron rod the youngest one brought her. It outweighed her sword by nearly double - but it did make her feel a little better to have it. She wasn’t sure she could cast so much as a firefly’s worth of magic right now.

“Lead the way, my lady,” said Ulus.

Zelda nodded, hoping she looked more regal than she felt as she led her champions forward. When she glanced over her shoulder, the rest of the staff had already returned to their work.


	10. Ascent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you are near your opponent, make them believe you are both far away as well as ignorant, and in their arrogance they will provide you the design of their defeat.

Zelda stepped into the hallway, mining her memory for something resembling a strategy. Twenty years since a delicate princess was scolded from the servants’ byways, but still she knew the castle better than anyone. One thread of thought raced down corridors and up tower stairs to the state rooms in the central keep, and another out into the bailey to meet the noisy soldiers assembling there.

But Herbert took his men away from the muster - so who directed the rest of the guard? The regiment stationed here for the funeral? Had the town watch been summoned also? Her wards should have hidden the flames through the night, but who saw the smoke first, and raised the alarm? Or had they raised alarm _before_ seeing it?

“Your pardon, your Majesty,” said Ulus. “If you want the fastest route, how about you tell us where we need to end and let us handle the middle?”

Zelda winced, combing her tangled hair back with her free hand. To the left, workrooms of every kind. To the right, the dairy and then the carriage houses. Above, the public rooms, and guest quarters above that. Forward, the potager garden hemmed in by servant’s quarters, the groundskeeper’s sheds, and the Heir’s Guard barracks. The latter once served as mews and kennel and wheelwright and basket weaving studio, until Herbert insisted the guard could hardly protect their charge effectively from the foot of her tower. Better they were stationed hard by the gate, to fend off threat before it could advance so close.

Which also stationed them across the parade ground from the castle guard. Which like the regiment, answered to Impa.

“You remember the brief reign of my uncle..?”

Ulus frowned. “May Nayru hold him in blessed peace, yes. I was young then, but your father was as like to his elder brother as anything except for the scar from the sledding accident when they were little.”

“Which brother did Herbert’s father serve?” Zelda turned for the stairs - Nabooru’s guard should have returned from castletown by now, even with the gates closed. When did a lock ever stop a thief?

Ulus made a rude noise. “A more loyal heart than Captain Herbert has never been born.”

“Lieutenant Colonel.” Zelda corrected her automatically, raising her improvised weapon as they reached the first landing. Clear. For now.

“Same difference,” Ulus returned, as her chosen assistants snickered. “He should just be grateful I’m too generous to tell the story about his misadventures in the hog pens when he was a boy.”

Zelda reached for her magic with a prayer to the Light. The gods - or something - answered, pulling a forgotten steel portcullis from a hidden recess in the lintel of the landing door with a shriek. One of the kitchen hands murmured a prayer of their own, but they followed her up the next flight of stairs without question.

_Herbert wouldn’t come to the state room on a whim. He knew Gan could move himself through magical wards - he doesn't know for certain the Exalted can't. She wasn't subtle about her demands to see his room. He must believe capturing Nabooru will give him some control of events - why?_

“Our enemy is concentrating effort on another objective,” Zelda said. _Possibly trying to kill her. Unless - she will use poison and shadow to risk the gods’ judgment a second time._ “Yet we cannot know what snares lay ahead of us. Question everything you see and hear. Hyrule depends on you. All of you.”

Silence answered her, but she could feel their tension as she eased open the next landing door to a desolate colonnade, eerie with the dawn filtering through latticework and green glass. It was early yet for the Hylian nobility, but not for the provincial gentry and Gerudo delegation. Especially with the chaos of bells and horns outside.

_The mob has no guidance-!_

Castletown was certainly awake as well - and within the walls a thousand courtiers milling about like hungry cucco for any scrap of rumor. A nudge, a sly hint, a suspicious eye seeing movement in the shadows - any crumb could wake frenzy and hatred. The fragile peace would shatter the moment a scapegoat fell, reigniting the war which had already claimed so many from every people.

“The tragedy of those days could return if our traitor is not caught,” she said, turning left, toward the throne room. “My father is dead, I am told, by a -”

“Geld'o ceremonial dagger,” said a new voice as they approached the wide gallery which linked this wing to the central keep. “Used to dispel poe or in the case of the late King, clean fingernails. Blasphemy to draw blood with it.”

Tam and Lutu rushed to shield her with their bodies and Ulus raised her cleaver. Zelda peered between them. In the middle of the gallery stood a muscled Gerudo woman in Sun’s Heart purple, with silver in her hair. She leaned casually on a staff of gnarled horseapple wood and she wore a faceted spirit gem of green garnet.

Zelda didn't know she’d been carrying that particular weight until it fell away. She pushed past her champions with a borrowed oath. “I didn't know you were here!”

“Wish I weren't. Your castle is colder than it used to be.” Nialet smiled. “Charming fashions though.”

Ulus scowled, menacing the other with her blade. “I never thought to suffer that old bag a third time.”

Nialet’s wry grin twisted into a snarl - but Zelda was a beat faster.

“You can wax nostalgic over your feud later - time is short. Come on-”

Nialet shook her head. “Then you don't need _baggage_ to slow you down. Just wish someone would bother bringing us barbarians some reliable news. I sent Lulu to the roof to see what dawn unveils.”

“You brought her _here_? At such a time? How is she? She must be my height by now-”

“A little taller, I think.” Nialet smirked, leaning on her staff. “Go on then, sooner you get back to your frivolous Hylian games, the sooner I can get back to the serious business of my morning nap.”

Zelda sighed and menaced the older woman with her iron bar, to no apparent effect. Her companions fell in beside her as she advanced. “You delight in pretending you are neither astoundingly silent nor quick - but you ought to know better than to waste your stories on me.”

“You're not playing at milkmaid, even if you are dressed for it.”

“Better than the alternative,” said Zelda, taking her arm and steering her towards the throne room. “We hunt a traitor.”

Nialet frowned. “So he died for nothing.”

Zelda paused. “Not exactly. It's complicated - but I will not have a riot over my father’s death while we debate minor details of _his_.”

Nialet laughed, but she kept pace. “Minor, she calls it, and himself to embrace Din’s purity before the week is out.”

“How do you know the blade that killed him?” Zelda asked as they opened the door at the end of the hall. Already, they could hear the roar of voices in the next room over. They sounded on the edge of panic, already.

“Mine is missing.” Nialet always cut to the heart of everything - but her garden had a formidable reputation, even in Hyrule.

Ulus cleared her throat. “Your Majesty. Who are we looking for? What are your orders?”

Zelda weighed her choices, surveying her tiny army. A chef. A potboy. A scullery maid. An old woman. And a disaster of a princess.  
Against an insidious evil coiled around everything that mattered.

“Show the courage of a hero.”

\- o - O - o -

The din of the immense Banner Hall rolled through her with a simultaneous physicality and emptiness uncomfortably similar to the misery of the void. The eyes of hundreds turned toward her, and the chaos shifted tone as a thousand tongues murmured her name.

Nialet’s voice behind her wove a benediction in her own tongue, a proverb she thought of often lately, though she hadn't heard it in many years. “Choose death,” she said.

Zelda raised her iron so its shadow advanced ahead of her own, but the crowd rather surged than parted. A face she hardly recognized advanced, demanding answers from her. Not that she could hear him. Even the long-eared Old Blood only claimed the questionable virtue of hearing the gods above mortals - they could not pick a single human voice from the multitude.

Another heartbeat later, she realized _none_ of the faces looked familiar. But then, the court had not had time to get itself ready. They had on their real faces.

The bold one reached out for her, looking ever more panicked at not receiving an answer. She felt the pull to retreat - so she advanced instead, slowly drawing an old rune of protection with the tip of her borrowed rod. Most of the splotch-faced hens cowered - the bold one retreated one step for each of hers, but he pointed at her, and at last he shouted words that made sense. And carried.

“You are responsible for this! Behind every tragedy, a hawk-nosed barbarian - and this _filth_ hiding behind Your Highness - you may not know! - but she knowingly bore _his b-_ ”

“The glorious rays of the Sun touch us all, do they not, Baron Rendal?” Nialet purred. “Or are you become a bitter old man now that you have proof that I can bed your wife better than you can?”

Zelda fumbled after something like dignity - the Baron had never looked so bald - or pale - before. She couldn't speak, else she would laugh. So she continued her advance to the far dais, sweeping her eye over the crowd for any sign of her enemy - or her influence.

“You - you are a conniving snake-” stammered Rendal. “And your people sleep with goats!”

Nialet didn't bother disguising her amusement. The roar of the room subsided into a resentful murmur, and she caught the sound of a rolling pin smacking rhythmically into a meaty palm. Ulus barked some unintelligible command, stepping up to Zelda’s left hand. The crowd retreated before the deceptively wild dance of her cleaver, even Rendal.

“You wouldn't last a week in the desert,” she snapped, shooing him back into the press of nervous people. “Your Queen has more important matters to attend than educating you on the small matter of weather. Or manners. Or your own lackluster performances.”

The baron gaped at her for a long moment.

“A wise spirit listens to the counsel of their chef,” said Nialet. “Before her old friend, the hawk-nosed barbarian, forgets her manners and shares some indelicate information about a racehorse.”

The crowd parted behind him - Zelda smiled as she caught a glimpse of Rendal’s red-nosed son pulling at his father’s sleeve. She smoothed the drape of her borrowed smock, letting them vanish into the sea of bodies.

Thirty paces - twenty - ten paces to the dais, six more to the throne. Arrayed around her, four loyal hearts and the hope of Hyrule. Even Tam, the youngest, must not have hesitated at the stairs.

_He shows promise._

Zelda expected the rich blue carpet with its golden crest would feel comforting under her bare feet after so much cold stone. Instead, it was mostly itchy.

“What better wind to lift a spirit held too long among mere mortals,” she began, soft at first. “What better hymn can we ask of our friends than they lift their voice in praise of who served best our beloved Hyrule.”

Zelda turned with practiced care for trailing skirts she didn't have, looking out over the faces of the court.

 _Her_ court.


End file.
